Two days after an American national was detained for carrying a knife concealed inside his hand luggage at Delhi’s IGI airport, new pictures have emerged of Winston Marshal Carmichael.

61-year-old Winston Marshall Carmichael, who was detained in the wee hours of February 10 when he was to board a Qatar Airways flight to Doha, had been subjected to extensive questioning by several agencies.

Marshal, is now being kept at Lampur detention centre as the security agencies were checking his statements besides awaiting clearance from the FBI.

Carmichael, a convert from Christianity to Islam, had a tourist visa to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and came here from Bangladesh. Carmichael had arrived in India in the last week of January and travelled to Pakistan through Wagah border where he attended religious congregations of Tabliq-e-Jamaat and went upto Karachi before flying to Dhaka in a Pakistan International Air flight.

He later entered India through West Bengal and took a train to the national capital where he was staying in a hotel at Nizamuddin. Delhi Police and security agencies were verifying his places of stay in the national capital and travel from West Bengal.

The initial probe in the case has revealed striking similarities between Marshal and terror suspect David Coleman Hedley. For instance both individuals have traveled and stayed in Pakistan, both carried fake passports and both have a history of drug trafficking offences.

The US national, who was being quizzed to probe if he was a similar operative like Lashker-e-Taiba suspect David Headley, was detained at the Indira Gandhi International Airport after a 4.3 by 1.5 inches knife concealed in a herbal plant ‘Shilajit’ was recovered by CISF from his hand baggage. The knife, though, was too small to be considered in the category of a weapon.

Daaod Gilani, suspected of involvement in the 26/11 Mumbai carnage and one of the two Pakistani expats charged with transcontinental terror plots, is a convicted felon who served 15-month prison sentence in US in 1999 before he changed his name to David Coleman Headley, a camouflage that may have helped him get a long-term Indian visa.

The discovery of the felony conviction becomes important in the context of the growing controversy over how he got a long-term Indian visa from the Indian consulate in Chicago, where the consul-general Ashok Kumar Attri is under fire for lax oversight. Some Indian community activists who have been campaigning against Attri for long have sought his recall.

The External Affairs Ministry in New Delhi and the Indian Embassy in Washington have said Attri acted within the purview of current rules and did not break any law, but intelligence officials are bristling at the loopholes that enabled Gilani/Headley to mask a conviction that should have raised a red flag.

According to US court records, Gilani, who took his mother’s last name Headley in 2006, was involved in a drug trafficking case in Philadelphia in 1997. He appears to have pled guilty and helped authorities in the case to earn a reduced sentence, because accounts of the episode, which give his full name as Sayyid Daood Saleem Gilani, say he aided Drug Enforcement Agency agents monitor an operation involving smuggling of a huge consignment of heroin and cocaine.

The fact that Headley-Gilani’s birthplace on his American passport is listed as Washington DC, effectively masking his Pakistani pedigree, appears to have fooled Indian authorities in Chicago. But information being pieced together now shows that he was the son of a Pakistani diplomat Saleem Gilani, who was posted in the U.S in the late sixties, and Serrill Headley, a Pennsylvania native who lived in the capital region those days.

The couple moved back to Pakistan after Daaod was born in the US but they split up soon after in the early 1970s when Serrill returned to US to eventually start a bar and restaurant called Khyber Pass in Philadelphia. In 1977, after at least two attempts, she got custody of the young Daood Gilani, who was at the Hasan Abdal Cadet College in Pakistan at that time.

Transported to Philadelphia, Daood apparently suffered from culture shock. Raised a Muslim, he had trouble adjusting to the idea that his mother ran a bar, according to a report that that time in the Philadelphia Inquirer, which traced his background in a story on Thursday. “He has never been alone with, much less had a date with, a girl, except the servant girls of his household,” the paper quoted a column from that time from its archives.

Serill Headley turned over the business to her son in 1985 but he quickly ran it into the ground, according to current owners of the restaurant. Meantime, he is said to have studied accounting, possibly at a community college in the Philadelphia region, and operated a video store, FliksVideo, with his mother.

A 2008 obituary of Serrill Headley in the Philadelphia Inquirer described her as an ”adventuress who contributed to Philadelphia’s restaurant renaissance when she opened Khyber Pass Pub in the 1970s.” It said she had purchased a neighbourhood bar on Second Street near Chestnut (now a trendy area) in which ‘’she left the regulars sitting at their stools arguing politics, while she transformed the surroundings with Pakistani wedding tents.”

Khyber Pass itself merited an Inquirer obituary when it closed in 1988, with the paper describing it as a ‘’saloon institution for the last 14 years” that ”provided a performing venue for all kinds of Philadelphia bands.” Its proprietor, Serrill Headley, blamed the closing on “tax problems and absentee management” caused by a long illness and an auto accident a year ago that left her with back and leg injuries, it said.

In Washington DC, there was no recollection in the diplomatic circuit of Saleem Gilani although archives showed a Director General of Pakistan Radio by the same name. But investigators are digging back into the records, also because the name Gilani (also spelt Jilani) has raised red flags in India, notwithstanding the fact that the Prime Minister of Pakistan shares the same name.

Source: TimesNow

Mumbai police sources on Friday (November 13) revealed that David Coleman Headley, arrested by the FBI for allegedly conspiring to carry out terror attacks in India, met Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operatives Fahim Ansai, Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal during his visit to the city prior to the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.

Sources added that both Tahawwur Rana and Headley had strong links with Indian Mujahideen’s top brass, including Saddiq, who is currently in the custody of Mumbai police for his alleged involvement in the 2006 Mumbai serial train blasts. Sources said that both Riyaz and Iqbal Bhatkal are absconding and are believed to be hiding in Pakistan. Investigations conducted by the Mumbai police have also revealed the Indian Mujahideen’s link is traced back to top LeT commanders in India and Pakistan.

Fahim Ansari was a prized catch of the Mumbai police and was arrested from Rampur, UP on the February 10, 2008. Ansari is accused of facilitating the 26/11 terror attack and is said to have been in touch with perpetrators of the Mumbai attacks. Detailed maps of the city recovered from this LeT operative, revealed that Ansari conducted recce of areas in Mumbai prior to the attacks.

Meanwhile, Riyaz and Iqbal are accused for the Ahmedabad, New Delhi and Jaipur serial blasts of 2008. Riyaz is reportedly said to have co-founded the Indian Mujahideen.

Sources within the Mumbai police also revealed that both Headley and Rana came to the city during 2007-09 on several occasions. Sources added that Headley posed as a Jew and tried to befriend Jews in the city. He is also said to have done a recce of Jews installations in Mumbai. This bit of information is been seen as a breakthrough in the 26/11 case, after the Jewish Chabad House in Colaba was attacked by two terrorists during the dastardly terror strike, which killed over 160 people.

Incidentally, when Headley was arrested, the FBI recovered from him a copy of a book — How To Pray Like a Jew — indicating the level of preparation he undertook while visiting his targets. Headley might have carried this book even when he was in Mumbai for a recce of Chabad House.

The FBI has been trying to find out whether Headley and his accomplice Rana, also arrested in the US, were involved in the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai and whether handlers of the duo and attackers of Mumbai were same. “The process of verification on his (Headley) visit to India between 2006-09 was on and we will be able to give a clear picture only after a week,” an official said.

During his stay in Mumbai, Headley used to reside at various places. During his last visit, he had stayed in a hotel in south Mumbai near CST. Mumbai Police had already approached the hotel seeking information like his entries in the register and on the people who used to frequent him during his stay.

The 49-year-old Headley was arrested last month at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport as he prepared to board a flight to Philadelphia, intending to travel to Pakistan. FBI also arrested Tahawwur Hussain Rana, 48, a Canadian citizen of Pakistani origin, for his alleged involvement in terror activities.